Graduation Day
by LoyaulteMeLie
Summary: Coda to 'Thicker Than Water' and 'Getting Up Again'. Ensign Keri Grenham attends her passing-out parade.
1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note: This story is a coda to 'Thicker Than Water' and 'Getting Up Again'. It has not been beta'd, so any mistakes are mine.**

**Star Trek and all its intellectual property is owned by Paramount/CBS. No infringement intended, no profit made.**

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The buzz went around the corridors, ratcheting up the tension that was already at fever pitch.

"It's true! He's here! The Admiral's come!"

At this level, of course, there was only one Admiral. The man who had commanded the ship that had faced down the Expanse and then later taken a decisive part in the Battle of Cheron; the man who was already a legend in his own lifetime.

It was a tradition for at least one of the senior members of Starfleet to attend the graduation day celebrations. The rumor had only started a day or two ago that they might be privileged to receive a visit from Admiral Jonathan Archer, but as this had never happened in any previous years it had gained little credence. He was an exceptionally busy man, still in constant demand as a diplomat in the process of guarding and guiding the fledgling Federation of Planets that owed so much of its existence to his inspiration, courage, determination, charm and sheer hard work. Up till a few days since he'd been confidently placed by gossip on Andoria, negotiating with the Imperial Council; now, it seemed, he was back on Earth. And – for whatever reason – he hadn't returned aboard his flagship, the _Endeavour. _He had been brought home by the USS _Pioneer_.

That news – incidental as it might seem to many of those at this level of the Academy – was of vital interest to one of the newly minted ensigns who were to formally graduate that day.

Keri Grenham re-braided her long platinum-blonde hair for what felt like the hundredth time and studied her reflection in the mirror anxiously. Her uniform was as neat as perfection could require, her make-up appropriately subtle. She'd already received messages of support from her Mom and Dad, who would be out there with the family in the special guest seating.

Confident that her appearance was about as good as it was ever going to be, she stepped away from the mirror and walked to the bedside cabinet. There was an old book lying on it; she touched the cover gently, as though it were sleeping and she feared to wake it.

_British Naval Battles._

She'd had it a long time. Had read it from cover to cover long before she was able to understand a tenth of what she was reading, and even when it had been borne in upon her that the subject matter was so abstruse as to be virtually useless to her, she'd read and absorbed it anyhow, finding it fascinating. Even if this had not been so, she'd have read it over and over again, in the effort to connect to the mind of a man whose image had become … not precisely vague, but somewhat attenuated over the busy years of her growing up: the man who had owned that book, and given it to her because it was something precious to him.

He too was a survivor of the Expanse and the Romulan War, where he'd earned himself such a reputation that when the newly refitted _Pioneer _launched in 2163, he was given the captaincy after only a few months as _Endeavour_'s XO. He and his crew had already written their own pages in Starfleet history, but they were rarely seen back at Sol. He'd married (what storms of selfish, girlish grief that news had caused her!), but his wife had died tragically young, and they'd had no children. He'd taken his pain back out among the stars, and seldom came home to the world that contained his wife's grave.

Starfleet had their own cemetery – too large a place altogether, after the Romulan Wars. The cadets were taken there as a matter of course, to show respect to the men and women who had made the ultimate sacrifice. She'd gone to find the grave, feeling some guilty need to apologize to the woman he'd loved so much. The woman who, all those years ago aboard _Enterprise_, had given her a packet of jelly beans in the effort to make her smile. Nothing marked it as special – all the headstones were identical here. Each bore the names of the honored dead, their dates and the name of the ships on which they'd served, and perhaps one or two words chosen by their loved ones. One small detail, however, was different. In front of the white marble headstone, a clump of yellow English daffodils was tossing in the March wind.

Now, remembering those valiant yellow flowers, the tears pricked at her eyes and she dabbed at them hastily; this was no time for her mascara to run! Faced with everything the daffodils represented, her apologies had seemed futile, and she'd turned tail and fled – a piece of cowardice that had shamed her ever since. One day she would go back. In the face of what she'd learned on the day after her eighteenth birthday, it was more imperative than ever that she should do so.

_Reeds don't run._

He'd said that at some point – treacherous memory had mislaid the details, but she could still see the seriousness on his face, when everyone else had been laughing. For so long afterwards she'd made him a very figure of romance, her own private Sir Galahad in a blue coverall, and secretly made believe that her name too was Reed so that a share of his reflected luster might fall upon her. A pretence that, although she'd outgrown it along with so much else in the necessary and complex business of becoming an adult, had made the bombshell of the truth strike even harder than it would otherwise have done, when it was revealed to her on the day after her eighteenth birthday.

He was her father.

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	2. Chapter 2

The news had struck her like a torpedo. It could hardly do otherwise, forcing her to change her concept of the world and her place in it. Her parents, plainly united in fear and anxiety of how this would affect her, had told her a strange story of their struggle to conceive, and then an approach made 'through someone in Starfleet' to benefit both themselves and an unknown woman far from Earth and either unable or unwilling to keep the child she was carrying. The legal arrangements had been handled quietly, and the fact of their having adopted her had been accepted among friends and family long before they returned to Earth. It was doubtful by now if many people actually remembered at all that she hadn't been born to them in the usual way. There was enough of a physical resemblance to satisfy those who looked for such things.

Naturally, the first thing she'd wanted to know once she'd emerged from her daze was what they could tell her about this woman – her biological mother. Unfortunately, the three of them had met only twice, and for short periods. Dad, never good with unscientific details, could tell her only that the woman had been small, with long fair hair that she wore caught up and pinned forward so it tumbled across her face a lot. Mom, with the female eye for observation, had spoken of the sense of strain and sadness, the brief snatches of conversation when no official ears were near. _The father doesn't know. I can't tell him. It's just too complicated. _Then, later,_ It would worry him too much. _And, last of all, _Tell her I loved her._

"It never made any difference to us, love," Dad had said now, folding her hands in his own, though with the utmost care not to even seem to detain her if she wanted to pull away. "We loved you from the first moment we saw you."

That, even in the worst moments of her dislocation and bewilderment, she'd never doubted. Nor could anything touch the love she felt for them. What had opened up within her had been more a curiosity centered on herself – on her roots, on the core of her identity. She'd always been an 'old' child for her years, and even at eighteen such a development could not seriously shake her self-possession. Nevertheless, a gulf had opened where hitherto there had been childish certainty. She needed to learn anything and everything she could, any facts at all on which to rebuild the foundation of her existence.

"And… the… my… father?" she'd asked at last, very low. She'd wanted to find another word, to circumvent the necessity of using that term in front of the man who'd held that title for the past eighteen years.

Mom's hands had trembled as they opened her handbag. "He found out about you. He … he sent us a letter. To give you, when…" The envelope came into view. The flap was tucked in, but not sealed: left open for examination, a gesture of courtesy and trust. "We haven't read it."

Handwritten letters were a rarity in an electronic age. The old-fashioned formality of the sender had been so evident that even before her fingers closed on the unmarked rectangle of vellum her heart had begun to pound. So many questions, and what answers would be contained within?

Unable to face being under observation while she read and digested it, she'd fled up to her room. A part of her had grieved for her parents, left helpless in the lounge to comfort each other as best they could while they waited for her return, but she needed to be _alone _at so momentous a moment.

Her fingers had been shaking as she hooked out the tucked-in flap and drew out the contents. One small photograph, somewhat worn with age, and a letter. Just one page, though the neat writing covered both sides. She saw, but did not immediately grasp, that the first line of the address was 'USS _Pioneer_.' Then, as the significance of that hit her, her heart had given the queerest jangling bound, as though that one line had already told her everything she needed to know.

The letter had obviously been written with enormous care and difficulty for the occasion, and told her that the photograph was only one he had of her mother. _It's all I have that I can give you of her_, said the writer. _I wish there was more._

She'd studied the picture hungrily, scanned it into her computer and used digital imagery to increase the size and resolution and smooth away the scars of age and wear on the original. It looked like a snapshot taken in a pillow fight; certainly a number of what looked like little downy feathers were floating in the air and clinging to the woman. She was being held down by the person who'd taken the photograph, and she was giggling. The blur of a hand close to the lens said she was going for the camera just as the shutter clicked. What could be seen of what she was lying on looked like a bed, and although it was only a head and shoulder shot, she didn't seem to be wearing any clothes.

She – _I can't even tell you her name, but we called her Pard _– was slim and pretty. The white teeth were partly revealed, clenched in determination under the giggles; she hadn't given up yet, not by a long shot. The blue eyes gleamed with glee and mischief. It was an intensely personal photograph, clearly taken in a private and intimate moment. She could understand why he'd kept it, even though _She died on a mission._

"Mom?" Keri touched the photograph gently where it lay on the scanner. The sound of the word told her she'd spoken aloud. _She died on a mission. _There were so many questions she'd never get answers for, because _she didn't tell me_, but there was _one day I hope you will feel able to forgive me _and

_Your father,_

_Malcolm Reed._

He had written to her regularly down the years since her rescue, if infrequently – the war had taken up so much of his time, and she suspected that he was not the world's most natural correspondent. Then when he was elevated to the captaincy he had had even less time for personal matters, but he still wrote when he could. Each of the precious letters had been printed off and stored in a box file she still kept in the cupboard next to her bed – somewhat worn and much-handled by now, with an embarrassingly poor drawing of an NX-class starship on the front with a stick-figure in a blue uniform beside it. The smile on the figure's face was of a size extremely unlikely to grace the original's with any frequency out there in a war zone, or when the happiness he had contrived to snatch in his personal life came to such an abrupt and unlooked-for end.

Still, the hero of such a rescue was far too important to fade entirely from her mind, and over the years she'd kept a scrapbook in the box file too – where each of the pitifully small and (to her mind) inadequate mentions he received in the media were likewise printed off or cut out. A single data disk completed the collection, containing each snippet on the news that concerned him or the ship he commanded. There were, naturally, untold numbers of books and documentaries detailing the events of the Expanse, and her parents had bought her them all, uncomplaining; not until much later, however, had it occurred to her that there had been a subtle note of strain in their reception of her hero-worship – a lack of unconditional enthusiasm that at the time she'd put down to envy of the adventurous life Malcolm Reed led out there in space. Later, of course, it had been all too obvious to her why they'd never been able to join wholeheartedly in her admiration of the dashing lieutenant.

They'd been afraid.

It hadn't dawned on her till too long after that momentous day just how afraid they must have been. How her rhapsodies must have galled the man she'd grown up calling 'Daddy', who had been unable to keep her safe the day the pirates struck on that routine trip to Denobula. His gratitude to her rescuer had been deep and fervent, but how it must have paradoxically hurt him to have her restored intact only thanks to the one man in the universe who had the right to step in and tear their family's bonds apart.

But he hadn't. Not so much as a single word in any of his letters had so much as hinted at what he knew, until that one, carefully sent to her parents for their consideration, to be passed to her if and when they saw fit.

She could still see their faces, pale with strain. They'd sat her down in the lounge, and she'd thought they were going to tell her somebody had died.

When they told her, she hadn't been able to understand what they were saying. It was simply too alien a concept. None of us truly see what is to be seen when we look in a mirror. Our features are too familiar, too taken for granted. She'd never seen the high cheekbones, the resolute, self-possessed mouth.

Never until now.

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	3. Chapter 3

The sun was high and bright as the cadets filed out to take their places. Proper discipline kept their eyes forward, but they were all keenly aware of the VIPs in their allotted places. The Academy's top brass, of course, but there were a few others. Prominent in the front row was a tall figure, a heavy number of silver threads among the brown hair now, and his posture a little stooped, but still commanding the eye: Admiral Jonathan Archer, the legend finally made flesh.

Possibly Keri's was the only eye whose peripheral vision wasn't concentrated on the admiral, but on the slight, upright figure beside him. She already knew where her mother and father would be standing, and she was as aware of their proud, loving presence as she was of the sun. When ceremony released its grip on her, it was to them she would run, as wholeheartedly as though they'd never handed over that letter. After all the soul-searching was done – and soul-searching there had been, producing many questions to which even now she still waited for an answer – Joelle and Marcellus Grenham had been her parents from the moment she drew breath, in a way that no amount of DNA could counterbalance. Their names were on her official birth documents, whatever the content of the secret file of which the letter had spoken. They were her parents still, and she lifted her head with confident dignity, feeling their eyes on her.

The ceremony eventually drew to a close. The bright new rank pip was shining on the breast of her uniform. Ensign Keri Grenham was ready to take up her service wherever Starfleet required, using all the training undertaken in fulfillment of a promise made sixteen years ago. At the invitation of the Principal, Admiral Archer stood up and made a speech; his voice was still strong, for all the lines that experience and care had dug into his face, and he still had the knack of commanding attention. He spoke of his pride in handing on the privilege of discovery to the next generation, and she wasn't the only one who blinked to clear suddenly misty eyes at this tribute from one to whom they all owed so much. There was a tiny silence when he had done, and then applause that was considerably more than perfunctory.

Her erstwhile tutor saluted her as the formal gathering ended. "Congratulations, Ensign Grenham." She returned the salute gravely. Her gravity lasted until she was close enough to see the size of her parents' smiles, and then it was abandoned completely and she flew into their arms, to be hugged and congratulated and made much of.

It wasn't the end of her training, of course. Now she had to embark on her specialty training, to complement the learning she'd acquired from her University studies and the more specialized skills she'd acquired during the three years of her officer cadet training. All this time that highly specialized career had beckoned, that distant lodestar so strangely gained; and she'd never looked aside from it, even though never again until now had she glimpsed in reality the man who'd inspired it.

He was never far from her thoughts during the celebratory meal that followed, though she rarely glanced up towards the High Table where the Academy's distinguished guests were being fêted, and never directly at him. Now and again she received the faintest impression that someone's gaze had touched her, but it was never other than fleeting. Perhaps, she thought wryly, this was the first manifestation of the 'sixth sense' that would come in so useful in her chosen line of work; or maybe it was just the workings of an overactive imagination.

Afterwards, there was a period of rest and relaxation before the evening's party. Her parents tactfully declared themselves tired by the long flight and the day's excitements, and said they needed a couple of hours to rest up in their room. Touched but not deceived by their loving understanding, she hugged them both hard, and walked them to their hotel; and leaving them there, she walked back to the Academy, her heart suddenly beating fast.

Somehow she'd expected their meeting to happen naturally, but when she returned the entrance hall was deserted. Enquiries at Reception elicited the fact that Admiral Archer had retired to receive local community leaders – did the man _ever _rest? – but that Captain Reed had no longer been with him.

The two men had naturally been allocated guestrooms, the best the place had to offer. But even in the circumstances, she wondered whether she had the right to go chase him down in his room, even if she could find out which one it was. Staring around the high, pale, echoing marble spaces of the hall, she found herself feeling almost nauseous with nerves and uncertainty. Surely, if it mattered – if he'd wanted them to meet – he would have found a way?

_You want to be a tactical officer_, she told herself. _Well, start thinking like one._

They'd corresponded since The Letter, of course (in her head, it always had capital letters); but somehow the questions would never come. She'd read it over and over again, so often that even now she could recite every word of it by heart, trying to read between the lines of neat, handwritten text. The sense that every word and every sentence had been considered with aching care had remained overwhelming, but that intense consideration had leached it of emotion. He said little in it of her mother or his relationship with her ('some day, I trust, I will be in a position to tell you everything I can'), or of his feelings towards herself ('only that not a day has gone by since then when I have not hoped and prayed you are well and happy'). It was the undemonstrative letter of an undemonstrative man, but slowly she had perceived that although it spoke of his duty to reveal the truth – doubtless sooner or later it would be discovered that her DNA was not that of either of her parents – his chief reason for reticence was the fear of the damage that discovery would do to her relationship with her adopted family. So when eventually she'd replied, for too many reasons her letter had shied away from everything she really wanted to say and ask. The composition of it had been bright and brittle and unreal, so that when long months passed before his next communication she'd begun to fear he'd taken her levity at face value. It had set the tone for their correspondence since. Fearing to say too much, she'd said far too little. Maybe it was little more than the courtesy of a Starfleet officer that kept him answering at all; maybe, rebuffed, he'd deliberately chosen now to avoid her and spare both of them the embarrassment. After all, looking back on what she'd written, it would be fatally easy to draw from it the conclusion that she'd cast in her lot with her 'real' family and outgrown the child's gratitude for a service that – however remarkable – he'd undoubtedly undertaken at the behest of his superiors.

The presence of a helpful Guardian Angel would have been a benefit right now, as she cast about in her mind for what she should do. The easiest thing would have been to admit defeat, but if it was true that _Reeds don't run_, it was equally true that _Grenhams don't quit. _

The sun had moved onwards now from the zenith. It poured through the high, arched windows and laid bars of gold on the floor. Between one pair of these windows there was a tall plaque in green marble. The dedication said _Those whose sacrifice for Earth will never be forgotten. _There were twenty-seven names carved there. Each of these would represent a person to him, someone he'd known and worked with; some of them, maybe, his friends or members of his department. Each loss out there in the Expanse would have been a wound in his soul, catalogued as a personal failure in his duty as Tactical and Weapons Officer: _Protect the ship at all costs._

Suddenly, she knew where he would be.

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	4. Chapter 4

It was far too late for the daffodils, of course.

There was hardly an unevenness in the pristine turf now to show where they'd flowered earlier in the year; once the flowering season was over the leaves were tied over tidily and allowed to die back before being clipped short.

He'd visited each of the twenty-seven graves. Some of them had contained no more than an empty coffin, the body that should have been within lost to the freezing vacuum of space in explosive decompression as the ship was brutally and systematically savaged by the attacking Xindi warships. Others contained whatever could be salvaged – bodies or parts of bodies only identifiable by their DNA before they'd been consigned to the ship's morgue.

Even now, occasionally in nightmares he still relived that day, woke sweating and cursing the way _conduct befitting an officer_ had prevented him from cursing as superior technology and weaponry and the sheer weight of numbers had overborne his efforts to protect his ship. The fight was finally on, the fight he'd anticipated every day since he'd come on board, the fight for the very life of the ship and everyone aboard her, and as soon as he'd summed up the opposition he knew it was going to be a losing one. The years of training, the iron discipline of a Reed and the hellish joy of finally being able to strike back at those who'd killed seven million innocent human beings back on Earth had kept his eyes focused on his station, and his fingers busy dealing out death; the end might not be in doubt, but the victory would be as costly for the attackers as he could make it. For all his English heritage he carried within him the dark abiding hatred of the Gael, and the fighting blood of the Celts, who believed a fighting death – a warrior's death – to be a hugely meritorious one. Nevertheless each blow to the ship's superstructure had felt as personal a violation as a blow to his own body. His peripheral vision took in the damage reports; he had to pass them on to the captain – the acting captain, since Jonathan Archer was gone for good, either dead or a prisoner of the Xindi. _"We've got hull breaches on C, D and E." _The emergency bulkheads, inoperable due to the severity of the damage; _"We're venting atmosphere." _The ship was powerless, her crew were dying, and this was the end, for _Enterprise_ and for humanity. _"E Deck's depressurising. We can't take much more of this." _ For all that he continued to use the ship's weapons – the fact that they hadn't been taken out early in the battle was as much an insult as a blessing, conveying Reptilian contempt for the threat they represented – it had become no more than a gesture, an instinct, a last screaming defiance.

_When the end is all there is, it matters. _

The incandescent rage had helped, if nothing else, to blot out the sight of T'Pol, their acting captain, sitting seemingly paralysed in the captain's chair. His logical mind told him that it was superlatively unreasonable to expect her to produce a solution, since there was none – there were moments, at best, remaining to their lives. The fact that the Bridge hadn't been targeted already was probably another piece of Reptilian spite: let the helpless Humans suffer for as long as their agony could be prolonged, let them watch as their vessel was carved apart piece by piece around them! Nevertheless, if Engineering was so badly compromised it was on emergency lockdown, both helm control and communications were lost and their propulsion was down to thrusters, it was time to wake up and smell the roses. There might be nothing the acting captain could _do_, but surely she could find something to _say. _Now, when there was nothing more to do than face oblivion, it would be good to do so with even a little dignity. It wouldn't make the final end any less final or any less painful, but …

… well, maybe he was just being too English.

"It was an honour to serve with you." He said it to the twenty-seventh grave stone, saluting, as he'd said it to all the previous twenty-six. Armoury Crewman Mackay had been a third generation Scottish immigrant, with sandy hair and eyes almost as blue as Phlox's. He'd been nearly half a head taller than the captain, and towered over his department head. Now and again, there had been a joking sparkle of the old, old rancour: _Och, five years takin' orders from this wee English bugger! _But he'd been a fine man to have in your team all the same, and he'd deserved better than to be almost bisected by the second blast that had hit C Deck. _He wouldn't have known much about it _was cold comfort at best.

He'd thought that day would be the worst he'd ever know.

Just goes to show, Fate always has another trick up its sleeve.

No salute for the twenty-eighth grave. He sat down instead, and after a moment he leaned almost companionably against the side of the headstone. It was cold, but space was colder, and this cold he could endure.

He didn't say much, for he was a man of few words at the best of times. All the wordcraft had been hers, and her voice had been silenced, taking his brief eloquence with it. Along with a part of him that he'd had to learn all over again how to live without; and now, like a sighted man who'd lost his eyes, he coped as best he could with his disability. There were still terrible days, but mostly he could congratulate himself on achieving 'philosophical'. And 'grateful', of course – eternally grateful for what he'd had. And 'lonely', now that he no longer had it. But those went without saying.

"I still miss you so much, Hoshi," he murmured. "I want to be with you again. But, it seems life's still got a use for me yet. Though I daresay I'll be getting my retirement papers soon enough. Being out there on the front line's a young man's game. I won't be all that sorry to put my feet up."

The exquisite eyebrows lifted ironically. _Sure. Okay, Malcolm, who do you think you're kidding?_

"Oy, I could do with some wifely respect here. You never know, I might make Admiral yet. I'd take the news to the Old Man personally. It'd probably knock the bigoted old bugger off his perch altogether – at last." He almost grunted, anticipating the dig in the ribs. "You never lived with him for eighteen years."

_He's still your father. And your mother would have been proud._

No answer to that. He watched the other visitors come and go; there were always at least one or two, from all corners of the world. Several looked across at him tight-lipped, mistaking his posture for a lack of respect.

_She's very pretty, Malcolm._

He hadn't been going to say anything. There had been no children for Hoshi. That damned disease had seen to that.

_Shit happens. _

Right. Like _he_ needed telling that. Some days he felt like he'd been born to be the faecal depository for the entire Universe.

He'd never been able to talk to his wife about the day _Enterprise _was pulverised by the Xindi. She would have her own memories of it, and doubtless they were enough of a burden for her without sharing his. (She knew about the nightmares, though; God knows he'd wakened her often enough, flailing around in his sleep.) Nor had he ever been able to make himself talk about the details of what he'd had to do on Farlaxi Station, though at least that horror had resulted in the rescue of the brightest light remaining in his universe.

Keri.

_You shouldn't be out here talking to me, _Hoshi told him tartly. _If she's anything like her father, she'll be sitting in there wondering what the hell she did wrong._

"Time spent talking to you is never time wasted." He turned his head and dropped a gentle kiss on top of the stone.

There was the distinct impression of folded arms, and a foot tapping impatiently. _How long were we married, Malcolm Reed?_

"Seven years, three months, two days, twenty-three hours and fourteen minutes."

_Right. And in those seven years, three months, two days, twenty-three hours and fourteen minutes, I got pretty good at knowing when you're stalling._

Aristocratic ancestral Reeds would have nodded approvingly at the haughty flare of his nostrils. "I don't 'stall'."

_Well, you wasted your time trying to outwit a woman, anyway. _She chuckled and nodded. _Enjoy._

He looked up.

A slight young ensign was making her way along the path towards him. The slanting afternoon sun gleamed on her uncovered hair, making the braids burn like platinum.

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	5. Chapter 5

Sitting down.

He was actually – _sitting down_, leaning against his wife's headstone in a posture of complete relaxation; arms loosely folded, legs crossed at the ankles. He looked as though he was having a casual conversation with a friend.

Maybe he was.

She stopped some ten meters away from him, as with what was still remarkable grace for a man of his age (a near-decrepitude of fifty-two) he rose to his feet and also stood, watching her uncertainly.

Sixteen years changes a man, even without the small additional pressures of living through a desperate war for survival on the front line. The hair that had been a dark chocolate color was now liberally threaded with gray; at either temple he had a streak that was practically white. He either didn't care enough, or wasn't vain enough, to make any attempt at disguising this, though it was still meticulously neat. He was still dressed as a Captain, with the ribbons of his many decorations gleaming on his left breast, but his demeanor was just so …

… shy.

She realized with a little flutter of humor that both of them would have been grateful if Starfleet could have included among its many protocols the correct procedures to be observed in the current situation.

She walked closer, slowly, almost – absurdly – as though she were afraid of scaring him into bolting. His head was up, confronting her; the gray eyes were wide. He was controlling his breathing, but if he'd been a horse he'd have been laying back his ears and starting to shift under the saddle.

Finally she stopped again, just at arm's length. They were much of a height, he perhaps a centimeter the taller. His body was as lean as she remembered it; evidently he had put effort into keeping trim. Close up, the smaller changes were visible. Even back then, his face had been lined for its age. Now it had acquired many more lines, the signature of experience and responsibility as much as the years. His gaze had the long focus she associated with those who stare out to sea for hours at a stretch, but the eyes were still keen, still the color of storm-clouds. His mouth was perhaps a little harder than it had been back then, but that's what a war does for you. The Battle of Cheron had been a vicious end to a bloody struggle. He'd seen too much war, too much death, and for all that they were all but strangers she realized intuitively that for one of the Fleet's most legendary weapons officers he actually hated killing.

"Keri." His voice hadn't changed at all. Still that cute English accent, and the way he had of blinking ever so slightly whenever he said her name. He looked as though he was going to say more, but he stopped, now blinking rapidly. She wondered desperately what he was thinking, and whether she reminded him of her mother.

On that thought, she put a hand into her pocket and drew out the photograph, now protected in a plastic wallet to prevent any accidental rubbing on the already fragile surface.

"Here," she said a little shyly, holding it out to him. "I think you should have this back. Thank you for sending it to me. It … helped."

For a moment she thought he was going to refuse, but then he reached out and took it. Their fingers touched, and they both jumped and smiled apologetically.

For each of them, it was like looking in a mirror.

"Keri, I–"

"Sir, I–"

Their opening gambits clashed, and both of them stopped. The awkwardness was horrible.

At that moment a dreadful question occurred to her. _Do you salute your father when he's a captain and you're both in uniform? _In ordinary circumstances a mere ensign of a few hours most emphatically should salute any officer senior to her, leave alone one so far above her as the captain of a starship, and he was known to be a stickler for the rules. Hell, she could maybe make a case that the circumstances were far from ordinary, and he'd addressed her by her name rather than her rank, so maybe he thought the same, but it was still a working possibility that she could end up with a reprimand on her file before her career as an officer was six hours old.

He looked back suddenly at the gravestone and smiled slightly. When he turned back, he ran a hand through his hair, rumpling its neatness, and exhaled. "Keri, I'm sorry. I must look like a complete idiot. I haven't a clue what to say to you. I suppose all this time I've been still seeing you as you were sixteen years ago, and you – you emphatically aren't."

She took a step nearer. He was recognizable to her now, and rank pips and ribbons didn't matter to either of them as sixteen years fell away. "I don't really know what to say either," she admitted a little shakily. "But I thought I could … I could maybe make a start with 'Thanks, Dad.'"

"'Dad.'" He ruminated, studying her. "I get to have a beautiful young lady call me 'Dad', Hoshi. I just knew today was my lucky day, though I'm damned if I know what I did to deserve it."

A tear escaped, obliging her to rub it away. "And after that, I thought maybe a hug might be nice."

"A beautiful young lady who has excellent ideas, too." He stepped forward and put his arms around her. His touch was light, tentative, but tightened as hers went around him in return. "Now, in true tactical officer style I return fire with the invitation to come up to my extremely luxurious guest suite and have a cup of tea, so we can have a long talk and get to know each other properly." He thumbed away another couple of tears. "And after that, and only if and when you're comfortable with the idea, I'd like it if you could introduce me to the wonderful couple who've done such a marvelous job of raising my daughter. I owe them a debt I can never repay."

She looked up at him. He was warm and real and wanted to be a part of her life. "Only on one condition."

The gray eyes narrowed down at her. "Excellent. Establish a position of strength and then issue your demands. I'm quaking."

"Well, I'm spending the weekend at my parents' house. I want you to come visit … and show me how much practice you had at making butterfly cakes."

He spluttered. "And just how much bloody time d'you…" He trailed off and glared, realizing he'd fallen for it exactly as he'd used to do aboard _Enterprise_. Her shoulders were shaking with giggles. "I should put you across my knee and spank you!"

"Too late for that, Dad." She leaned up and kissed his cheek gently. "Now, how about that cup of tea?"

"Finally, you're speaking a language I understand." He kissed her forehead. "'Lay on, Macduff, and damned be he who first cries 'Hold! Enough!'"

Her eyes danced. "Shakespeare. Macbeth. And if I remember, the next line is a stage direction – 'Exeunt fighting. Alarums.' You don't want fighting and alarums here, do you? Seriously! I'd have thought that was one thing you'd had enough of!"

"My opinion of the American education system has risen in leaps and bounds. Not so long ago it was relying on Superman containing subtext layered on subtext." He bent briefly and touched his wife's headstone in a gentle farewell, and then they began strolling unhurriedly back down the path.

Behind them, the long rays of the sun burned on the gilded arrowhead insignia at the top of the headstone.

IN MEMORY OF

LT. HOSHI SATO-REED

2129 – 2165

BELOVED WIFE OF

CAPT. MALCOLM SATO-REED

NX-01 _ENTERPRISE_

_'FOR THOSE WHO LOVE,_

_TIME IS ETERNITY.'_

**The End.**

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**All reviews received with gratitude!**


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